Bill de Blasio sues five oil companies over climate change

A week after a brutal snowstorm froze New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered a one-two punch Wednesday in the name of climate change, announcing he will seek billions in damages from five major oil-and-gas companies while moving to divest from fossil fuels.

“It’s time for them to start paying for the damage they have done,” Mr. de Blasio said at a press conference at the Manhattan Youth Center. “It’s time for Big Oil to take responsibility for the devastation they have wrought.”

The two-front attack was promptly pilloried by industry groups as a cynical political stunt, even as it put New York City at the forefront of the environmental movement’s campaign to recruit local governments as allies in the climate change fight.

Flanked by municipal leaders and top climate activists, the Democratic mayor said his goal is to divest the $189 billion public-pension funds from fossil fuels by 2022, which he said would make New York the first major U.S. city to do so.

Mr. de Blasio also announced that the city has filed a lawsuit against five top energy producers, blaming the companies for greenhouse-gas emissions that he said have produced disasters such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

You Might Like

“I remember those days after Sandy in the Lower East Side. I remember how desperate it was. I remember how much fear and confusion there was,” said Mr. de Blasio. “And this was a tragedy that was wrought by the actions of the fossil-fuel companies. Let’s be clear: That’s where it came from.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified billions from five companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell — to fund a proposed $20 billion infrastructure project that would “build resilience against rising seas, more powerful storms, and hotter temperatures.”

“The City of New York is taking on these five giants because they are the central actors, they are the first ones responsible for this crisis, and they should not get away with it anymore,” said Mr. de Blasio.

Pushing back were oil-and-gas and industry representatives, who accused the mayor of doing more to curry favor with environmentalists than address human-caused global warming.

“This lawsuit is factually and legally meritless, and will do nothing to address the serious issue of climate change,” said Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue that requires global engagement. Should this litigation proceed, it will only serve special interests at the expense of broader policy, regulatory and economic priorities.”

The legal action comes on the heels of lawsuits filed in the last six months by seven California localities, including Oakland and San Francisco, demanding billions from oil companies in order to build higher seawalls and other climate-driven infrastructure projects.

“Similar to recent lawsuits in California, this headline-seeking stunt is an absurd attempt to politicize natural disasters, rather than a good-faith effort at securing meaningful change,” said Linda Kelly, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Association of Manufacturers.

“De Blasio is showing where his priorities really are by choosing to make his announcement flanked by controversial environmental activists,” she said. “Ironically, this attack on energy manufacturers comes at a time that New Yorkers have depended on natural gas and heating oil to carry them through the recent extreme cold.”

Those backing the mayor at the press conference included climate activist Naomi Klein, Greenpeace’s Naomi Ages and 350.org’s Bill McKibben, who called the event “one of the most important moments” in the 30-year-old climate-change movement.

“New York City got very, very real today,” said Mr. McKibben. “Today, the mightiest city on our planet takes on its most powerful industry, its richest and most powerful and most irresponsible industry.”

Companies countered that the courts are the wrong venue to decide public policy issues like climate change.

“Climate change is a complex societal challenge that should be addressed through sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts,” said Shell spokeswoman Natalie Gunnell.

ExxonMobil spokesman Scott Silvestri said the firm “welcomes any well-meaning and good faith attempt to address the risks of climate change,” but that lawsuits “filed by trial attorneys against an industry that provides products we all rely upon to power the economy and enable our domestic life — simply do not do that.”

The theory championed by Mr. de Blasio — that climate change makes storms and other weather events worse — has been hotly contested in academic circles.

University of Colorado professor Roger A. Pielke Jr. released a chart Monday showing that global weather-related losses as a proportion of GDP actually declined from 1990 to 2017.

“The most important caveat: don’t use disasters to argue about trends in climate. Use climate data. Duh,” Mr. Pielke said in his post on Climate Fix.

What’s more, no hurricane made U.S. landfall from 2005-2016 during the so-called “hurricane drought,” the longest on record. Hurricane Sandy degraded to a post-tropical storm before hitting the eastern seaboard.

Debate over divestment

The fossil-fuel divestment campaign has faltered in recent years amid decisions by universities to retain their investments in the name of fiduciary responsibility, but New York City has a recent history of using its pension funds to make political statements.

In 2016, the city’s employee pension fund announced it would sell its holdings in three sporting-goods retailers that sell firearms.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said the city would submit a resolution Thursday on divestment and insisted that it could be accomplished without jeopardizing the pensions of police, teachers, firefighters and other public employees.

Divesting from fossil fuels would pull roughly $5 billion from the city’s five public pension funds, and would represent the largest municipal divestment in U.S. history, according to the mayor’s office.

“We’re going to crunch the numbers and make a plan so that we get New York City’s pension funds in the business of making our planet cleaner and greener with our investments, and we’re going to do it while maintaining our fiduciary responsibilities,” Mr. Stringer said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed last month pulling fossil-fuel investments from the state’s retirement fund, prompting state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli to reiterate that “there are no immediate plans to divest our energy holdings.”

Matt Dempsey, spokesman with the pro-industry group Divestment Facts described Wednesday’s announcement as a “prime example of ‘ready, fire, aim.'”

He said the process of divesting from co-mingled funds necessitates “extensive transaction fees and ongoing management fees,” which have the power to “rob endowment funds of as much as 12 percent of a fund’s total value of a 20-year time frame.”

“When pressed on the details of divestment, both officials ran into real trouble: In addition to being a costly and ineffective effort, divestment is also not something that happens overnight but a long and costly process resulting in little more than a feel-good headline,” said Mr. Dempsey.

Share on:

Join the discussion

Unless someone has a crystal ball they cannot possibly KNOW future facts and when one ignores present harms to avoid imagined disaster they are the only one guilty of hurting people

This is NOT about climate change but wacko nutjobs who think they are so powerful they can control the weather when the reality is they cannot even control their own thoughts and are the victims of charlatans and quacks who have sold them a story of the sky is falling

And any oil company which concedes this point to them deserves to be plundered

“It’s time for them to start paying for the damage they have done,”,,,,well step up to the plate DeBlasio. Paying off that $20 Trillion debt guys like you and Obama left us to pay off, would be money better spent than putting the guys out of business who produce the Petroleum jelly you use to grease the broken wheels of Democrat driven government, or lubricate the parts of the socialist penetrated backsides of THE PEOPLE. Take that lubrication away and the pain of your governance would get a lot more painful. Just how are you going to power the tractors, chainsaws, rescue boats and hurricane cleanup equipment without petroleum? To a guy like you, if it moves and produces, tax it. If it doesn’t move or produce, you and your party have already destroyed it. It has got a lot colder in New York because of guys like YOU, not the environment, and your pension funds will soon dry up as you move from Petroleum based investments to wind farms and ethanol companies. Your administration is the Solyndra financial canary in the American political coal mine, right after Detroit.

You don’t have to make sense, this is a tactic that Sharpton has been using for decades; sue the major companies until they give in and throw some cash your way. Besides this scam will put him in the national headlines for his dillusional run for the presidency.

And if he really feels its time to pay up for damage caused, FINE YOU START deblasio.. ALL YOU AND YOUR FELLOW amnesty loving open borders cohorts should be made to pay to EVERY VICTIM and families of VICTIMS OF illegal aliens who have committed crimes

Bill says, “It’s time for Big Oil to take responsibility for the devastation they have wrought.”
So I guess your car, your siding, all the computers that are used in making you money and running the city should all be removed from your environment as big oil is behind the creation of most of these things. Lets see you do it with solar or wind power. NYC the biggest user of electricity the world has ever seen.
I think we should sue Bill and NYC for all the night pollution in the form of light, besides one of the biggest taxi fleets in the world.
This guy should not have been reelected and should be given a pencil and pad to replace his computer.
Nuff said as I could get crazy on this guy and the topic.

I’ll just bet Trump files his state income taxes based on his FLORIDA residence,,,no state income taxes here. Any New Yorker with a Florida summer home is an idiot to claim New York residency. State Bankruptcy will follow irrational tax, spend, sue, guys like DeBlasio like night follows day.

deblobzio is an imbecile. worse, he is also lazy and incompetent and an ignoramus. that new yorkers, of all people in America, elected this bozo twice speaks to the outright depressive and inconsolably hopeless atmosphere in a city which was once actually the center of the world. just because a city a place has crowds of people and big buidings does not make it a great city or a great place. thailand has that. the mayor blob and oprah both imagine they should be President of the USA. that is what we have come to. and that speaks for itself.

Shame on every NYer that voted for this unaccomplished, unimpressive, self promoting thug. While NYC schools are an embarrassment and too often dangerous, children are underserved and in danger from Children’s Services subpar oversight, homeless infest the streets and lone terror attacks according to DeBlasio/Cuomo are “the new normal” DeBlasio spends his time at the gym, napping in his office, traveling the globe and country with his socialist/communist agenda and neglecting his job. So so very sad.

The reason, a $189 Billion public pension fund. It’s the money, always the money! Because the climate change caused by big oil only affects the democrat controlled coastal states and communities. I’m so glad I live in fly-over country, where we don’t have climate change, just seasons. I think this idiot needs to invest all of the public pension funds in to ‘green’ energy.

Every time this idiot opens his mouth it makes me glad I no longer live in NYC. To all the morons who voted for a man who bragged that NY’ers don’t care about all the corruption of his administration get exactly what they deserve.

Thinking people and deep pocked oil and gas companies MUST jump on this opportunity to FORCE the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) man made global warming hoax perpetrators to PROVE their lies are the truth. IMPOSSIBLE for them to do. They have been wrong at every turn. They have lied, misstated, hidden and altered their findings to protect their government funded rice bowls. Without AGW, they will have to get honest jobs. Can’t have that!

The AGW HOAXers have ONLY consistently WRONG computer models to support their position. Those models are only correct, after the fact and after they have been modified to reflect what happened. The models have ALWAYS BEEN WRONG, as they will continue to be, so long as they fail to include the most significant impact on climate – activity on the surface of the sun, clouds and water vapor in the atmosphere!

Maybe the energy companies should help New York, Oakland, San Fran, et al fight climate change by cutting off heating oil, natural gas, diesel, and gasoline sales to them. “Big Oil” could promote harmony with these city governments by granting their wishes and denying their citizens the choice of using “Big Oil’s” products. And, since most of the electric used in New York is generated by fossil fuels, that would have to be turned off too. No lights or cameras on Big Bill would improve the lives of the rest of us!

These energy companies, along with all the others that provide sources to New York should simply close the pipelines, power generating plants, and all other fossil fuel providing services to New York. And send them an adios and good luck trying to operate the state on Wind and Sun power. I’m sure the residents will give Cuomo and De Blasio a big thank you and will be very happy to keep them in office.

No. Don’t shut off the oil/fuel supplies. Just double the price for NYC. Call it the DB tax to cover expenses of the DB suing the oil companies. The idiot is just betting on them throwing some money at him to shut him up, but hopefully they’ll take steps to shut him down instead. I’m sure the unions will have something to say about messing with the pension plans.

This is pure grandstanding and a shakedown attempt. Their earlier attempt to sue oil companies for “climate change” fell through, so here’s his next ‘brilliant’ idea. deB can’t fund his pet green projects with tax money, so he’s going to try and get the oil companies to pay for it. Good luck with that, the oil companies have smart lawyers. Pulling oil stocks out of pension plans? Quite irresponsible – they’re great dividend payers, which is exactly why they’re in the pension plans in the first place.

I guess DB did NOT get the MEMO:
DO NOT FILE LEGAL ACTIONS! ( We cannot prove Global Warming is Man Made. The Science is not on solid ground.) You take this to court, you have to use OUR MATERIAL in the legal term: FULL DISCLOSURE … we already had several BAD DISCLOSURES, we do not need more.

“Mr. de Blasio also announced that the city has filed a lawsuit against five top energy producers, blaming the companies for greenhouse-gas emissions that he said have produced disasters such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.” says the top NY communist mayor as he rides around in his bullet proofed limousines. If so concerned about climate change, start riding a 10-speed bike around the city. I guess the fact that his welfare payroll is expanding with every illegal that he allows and supports, he needs these billions to keep his welfare system afloat.

The climate change debate is ending because the Sun, that controls our climate, is making a strong statement now. We are in for devastating extreme cold for the next 20+ years or so where a little less than half of the worlds population is expected to freeze or starve to death. Most of those people will live in urban areas like NYC. They cannot pass a law to keep it from happening. Its The Grand Solar Minimum and it is causing volcanoes to erupt and more earthquakes to happen. The New Madrid Fault between Memphis and St Louis will probably erupt and cause severe damage to gasoline, fuel oil and natural gas pipe lines, crossing that area, that supply the Eastern US. That will hit NYC badly for years. Find out all about The Grand Solar Minimum it could mean the difference between life and death. Its going to be very tough times for the next 30 years or so. This is not your regular Solar Minimum, that happen every 200+ years, but far worse. People who believe strongly in global warming will not believe in global freezing until it is too late.

How would it work if the oil and gas companies slowly stopped doing business in New York state? Just as gun manufacturers have left states where politicians have shown them they weren’t wanted through restrictive laws, let New York become dependent on all electric cars, buses and trains. It seems to be what they want. Ports could pay special fees to obtain the necessary fuels for shipping.

“blaming the companies for greenhouse-gas emissions that he said have produced disasters such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012”

If we’re going to talk cause and effect, let’s look at the effects of liberalism/socialism on a city. In 1950, Detroit was the center of industry for the entire world. It was the pinnacle of industry. But then liberalism/socialism took over. Now it looks like Beirut or some city on the news where locals kill each other and there are a million refugees.

Meanwhile, Alabama doesn’t play games with the auto unions. Who needs them? There’s going to be ANOTHER new auto plant (Toyota/Mazda) built in AL. Plants closing down all the time in Detroit. Unions are parasites, as are liberals/socialists.